Identity check

There's something missing about Irene

by Peter Keough

ME, MYSELF & IRENE. Directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Written by Peter and Bobby Farrelly and Mike Cerrone. With Jim Carrey, Renée Zellweger, Robert Forster, Chris Cooper, Anthony Anderson, Mongo Brownlee, Jerod Mixon, Michael Bowman, and Tony Cox. A Twentieth Century Fox release. At the Harbour Mall, Hoyts Providence Place 16, Showcase, Starcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.

Even though it might be the least funny Farrelly brothers film yet, Me, Myself & Irene still has more laughs than any other movie this summer, with the possible exception of Battlefield Earth. But those looking for the equal of such gross-out moments as the prolonged bowel movement in Dumb and Dumber, the hair gel in There's Something About Mary, or just about any gag in their underrated masterpiece Kingpin will be disappointed, though there's a good chance "a little extra cheese on your taco" will enter the pop-cultural lexicon. As a chapter in the Farrellys' ongoing road tour of the frontiers between sado-masochism and true love, scatology and sentimentality, Irene is just a diverting sidetrip.

Then there's the Jim Carrey factor. Unfairly rebuffed by the Oscars (and the box office) for his dramatic ambitions in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, he returns to his staple, extreme comedy. Yet after those range-stretching efforts, he seems here to be going through the motions -- though they remain motions beyond the talent and dignity of most comic actors. Carrey is Charlie Baileygates, a Rhode Island state trooper who's seen in the film's prologue (there's an aw-shucks voiceover narrative from Rex Allen Jr., a letdown from the accompaniment sung by Jonathan Richmond in Mary) marrying his true love Layla (Traylor Howard) and retiring to his little house on the coast. A misunderstanding leads to a fracas with the limo driver, Shonté (Tony Cox), an African-American little person, and, unnoticed by Charlie, sparks fly between his assailant and his bride.

In due time Layla gives birth to triplets -- whom all but Charlie recognize as Shonté's -- and shortly thereafter, she leaves him for her diminutive lover, a Mensa member like herself. In a kind of inverse of the premise of Steve Martin's The Jerk, Charlie whole-heartedly and with not a little self-flagellation raises the three boys -- Jamaal (Anthony Anderson), Lee Harvey (Mongo Brownlee), and Shonté Jr. (Jerod Mixon) -- as his own.

Some 15 years and a hilarious jump cut later, we see that Charlie's nontraditional ménage has done little for his standing in the police force or the community. He's still a nice guy, which may be the problem: he lets everyone take advantage of him and treat him with contempt, with the bruises to his minute ego being soothed by the boisterous love of his huge, trash-talking, genius sons back home. One day someone cuts in line at the supermarket and Charlie snaps. He becomes Hank, his long-repressed alter ego, a lascivious, sadistic asshole -- the Cable Guy with fewer kinks -- who mutters the movie's better lines in a Clint Eastwood rasp while he avenges Charlie's grievances in a brief montage that is the movie's highlight.

The rest is slow going (the film clocks in at nearly two hours), as Charlie is medicated and so is the movie. Things pick up when Irene (Renée Zellweger) is brought into the station on a warrant from upper New York State and Charlie is enlisted to drive her back. Both he and Hank fall for her -- it's like Mary with Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon playing the same character. Instead of manic-depression, however, the movie opts for catatonia. Hank's psychotic aggression and Charlie's wheedling submission prove equally ineffectual and unfunny. And Zellweger is no radiant Diaz; her soft features arouse more paternal protectiveness than romantic ardor. She has her own something, however; her expression of injured dignity and non-comprehending satisfaction following a night with Hank and an 18-inch dildo suggests she might be harboring her own Ms. Hyde.

What's missing here is commitment: the Farrellys don't push Hank's transgressiveness or Charlie's humiliation to the limit, so instead of reconciling the two they merely dilute them. On the other hand, Charlie's three sons steal every scene they're in, even from Carrey, and in the process they flaunt some of Hollywood's more offensive racial stereotypes. Word is that the Farrellys are planning a spinoff sequel with the three. Let's hope some new material can sharpen the brothers' edge. Otherwise the jokes will start getting numb and number.

---

Farrellys with taste

---